0 notifications total

Feed detail update

View Kedar Gadgil’s graphic link
View my blog
Benevolent Delusions

Overheard in a casual conversation: someone I know, intelligent, well-meaning, and generally delightful, wistfully said they were born in the wrong era. I’ve heard this sentiment before. Quite a few times, actually. Almost always from good eggs. Thoughtful people. Sensitive souls. I’ll admit, even I’ve entertained the fantasy. That a hundred-odd years ago, life was somehow slower, kinder, more civilised. That had I been born in, say, the late 19th century, I’d be reclining in some leafy estate, living the gentle life of a pipe-smoking gentleman of letters, writing longhand notes to lovers and editors, riding horses without a helmet, retiring at dusk to a private library, and attending ballroom affairs where men bowed and women curtsied with grace.

It’s a lovely image, isn’t it?

But peel back the sepia, and it begins to smell a little off.

Because that version of history, the one with silk gloves and handwritten invitations, only exists for a tiny slice of people. And those of us who feel this sort of nostalgia often make one convenient, unspoken assumption: that we’d be part of that elite. That we’d be the ones drinking sherry and debating politics in drawing rooms, not emptying chamber pots or dying of syphilis in alleyways. Given my caste and gender, that assumption isn’t entirely implausible. But it is unexamined, and frankly, rather arrogant.

The vast majority of people back then, and by ‘people’ I mean women, lower castes, the colonised, the poor, lived lives that were, in Hobbesian fashion, nasty, brutish, and short. For most humans in most of human history, the past wasn’t a picnic. It was a battlefield. One you were usually losing.

And yet, the fantasy persists.

I see the same delusion in those who yearn for a “benevolent dictator” to set things right. Ah yes, the noble strongman. The just tyrant. The great fixer. Of course, this magical despot is always presumed to be someone who shares their values, their tastes, their sense of right and wrong. Someone they’d have a drink with, perhaps. It never occurs to them that the baton might land in the hands of their ideological nemesis.

Which is why I like to ask them a simple question: “Would you still want a dictator if that person,” and here, I gesture casually to someone they utterly detest, “were the one in charge?”

The silence that follows is often the most honest thing they’ve said all day.


View Ravi Kumar Murugesan’s graphic link

Ravi Kumar Murugesan • 1st

Award Winning FilmMaker/Author/BroadcastJournalist/VoiceActor
Benevolent Dictator is an oxymoron. The erstwhile kings like Ashok or Rajarajan were benevolent dictators only. I don’t think any king can be benevolent.
View Yash Pratap’s graphic link

Yash Pratap • You

Web Dev, System Design, AI
Ravi Kumar Murugesan Benevolent dictators or kings never really existed in history. You’ll find that so-called benevolent rulers were often corrupt, allowing others to loot their own resources just to protect themselves from their own families. They were extremely cunning, cowardly, and opportunistic. That’s why they needed so much marketing about their “hypothetical greatness,” like “I can fight a crocodile with my bare hands.” 🤣
View Arun Kumar Maheshwari’s graphic link

Arun Kumar Maheshwari • 2nd

Ex-CIO/COO/VP Engineering. A problem solver spanning strategy and execution/tactics in the Software/IT/Tech space. Customer upfront and center with support of win-win partnerships and high performance teams
A benevolent dictator is a rare exception. Maybe happens within a culture like Asia to the east of us which is very practical and pragmatic not ideological or religious - Singapore, S. Korea, Taiwan.

While you were being very generous and charitable with those at home thinking "benevolent dictator"... I look at them as Stupid as defined in "The Theory of Stupidity by Dietrich Bonhoeffer".
View Yash Pratap’s graphic link

Yash Pratap • You

Web Dev, System Design, AI
Arun Kumar Maheshwari Benevolent dictators or kings never really existed in history. You’ll find that so-called benevolent rulers were often corrupt, allowing others to loot their own resources just to protect themselves from their own families. They were extremely cunning, cowardly, and opportunistic. That’s why they needed so much marketing about their “hypothetical greatness,” like “I can fight a crocodile with my bare hands.” 🤣
View Arun Kumar Maheshwari’s graphic link

Arun Kumar Maheshwari • 2nd

Ex-CIO/COO/VP Engineering. A problem solver spanning strategy and execution/tactics in the Software/IT/Tech space. Customer upfront and center with support of win-win partnerships and high performance teams
(edited)
Yash Pratap Yep! I agree there is nothing to remember, learn from or redeeming from the "age of royalty" - a very long one unfortunately. Our focus of history should start from the era of the start of the Freedom Struggle - early 1900s. From before that we should take a simple view of - never again is the only thing to learn from it and not remembering anyone from it is just fine. If someone puts a gun to my head and asks - no you have to remember 2-3 from that long period - I will only remember Buddha, Ashok and Akbar.
View Yash Pratap’s graphic link

Yash Pratap • You

Web Dev, System Design, AI
Arun Kumar Maheshwari Definitely, I proposed the solution for the same because it's the same problem in abstract, the problem of rupees, solved by Dr Ambedkar in 1923.

In Corporate India, services are provided to US-based clients under terms largely set abroad. Big companies profit, but smaller firms and workers gain little.

Wealth and opportunities remain concentrated among the upper-middle class of urban India, who have access to education in English-medium convent schools and coaching.

Many of these individuals later become a significant portion of educated migrants living in Western countries.

It means that the money earned from the hard work of the average Indian IT employee, which should have come to India, remains in the U.S. and other Western countries in the form of taxes and assets held by Indian elites living there. This makes Indian community in US as one of the wealthiest relative to its population (50 Lakh Indians owning approx $ 0.8 - 1 Trillion).

We haven't created RBI equivalent solution for corporate India IT where different companies can compete with each other for projects and where Government can give protection to US client regarding money and quality of work.

 https://lnkd.in/gVv_Pyg7

Why Narayan Murthy isn't scared of IT industry's decline | Yash Pratap posted on the topic | LinkedIn

70 - 80 - 90 hours — why is Narayan Murthy not scared of the outrage from Indian IT employees? One simplistic answer could be: AI/automation, an excessive supply of engineers, or stock manipulation — but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is...
View Yash Pratap’s graphic link

Yash Pratap • You

Web Dev, System Design, AI
Arun Kumar Maheshwari This country is paying a heavy price for not reading the colonial history and contributions of Dr Ambedkar. Sometimes I felt that casteism is so deep in this society that people consider "Constitution of India" as untouchable that's why people never bother to even read about their own rights out of hatred. What a self harm ..
View M.N. Gupta’s graphic link

M.N. Gupta • 2nd

Ph D, FNASc , FNA ; Former Professor, Head (chemistry Dept), Dean (PGS&R) at IIT Delhi
We often forget that past, present and our wishful thinking about the future is always a package deal. We never get to opt in or opt out of its parts. I confess to a similar fantasy about the way science was practiced in the past. Come to think of it, Galileo was imprisoned for life for suggesting that earth revolves around the Sun. The worst which can happen today is that they will reject your paper!
View Shashwati Mishra’s graphic link

Shashwati Mishra • 3rd+

Your voice is costing you raises, promotions, and deals. I fix how you talk in meetings, so people trust you and say yes.
This made for an interesting and entertaining read. I have often heard the same nostalgic comments from all.quarters. But found it rather pointless to argue or point at some ideas mentioned in the post to.them.
Assumptions galore.
But as rightly pointed out, the chances that we might be just about scraping through life trying to not die are much higher than imagined.
And the concept of rhe benevolent dictator. The ending about the silence... That is hilarious.
View Vasu Guruswamy’s graphic link

Vasu Guruswamy • 2nd

Focused on deep-tech driven impact investment. Member in private and public boards
Very elegantly written!
I also have this dream sometimes of going back into history (especially while reading some novels or historic articles) and often have to wake myself up by thinking about the reality of how a HUGE section of the world’s population were living a horrible life.
This world is a far better place today for the largest section of the population ever in the history of humanity. Yes, still there is a big chunk that is experiencing a wretched life, but that % is at its lowest since humanity started.